


be strong, my girl

by hotskytrotsky



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/F, Modern AU, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 21:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1618208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotskytrotsky/pseuds/hotskytrotsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before Elsa leaves for college, she spills a juicy secret - one that's very relevant to me, because I've kinda-sorta-maybe been in love with her for three years. Modern AU with powers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to real persons or events is entirely coincidental. And if you happen to know me and try to argue otherwise, I'm just going to point out that you were reading Disney incest fanfiction, so hey.

“Girls,” said Elsa quietly into the dark, and my entire world inverted.

It all started earlier that evening. It was our one special summer, that sunset summer after graduating high school when everyone is bound tight together in solidarity by swiped beer and the knowledge that the parting of the ways approaches. We had nothing to do but work in coffee shops and landscaping businesses all day and eat ice cream all night, then fall asleep drunk or high or completely stone-cold sober under piles of blankets and our friends’ warm limbs in the woods. In the morning we ate pancakes and recounted loudly our wild tales, which disturbed the senior citizens who were the only other people present at ten ‘o’ clock on a Wednesday morning at our favorite diner.

We knew that not only summer but the precious _feeling_ of that summer, the closeness and the camaraderie, the slow satisfaction, would end come September, when we scattered across the nation to begin our college careers. Going away to college changes you, hopefully for the better. But that summer I dreaded leaving because I loved who I was _then._ That summer, for the first time since I was a child, I felt like a free spirit. But I knew it was going to end, and for that it was all the sweeter.

It ended earlier for me and Elsa. She was off to visit her family in Norway, and then to college up north. But unlike the rest of us, she was moving, permanently. There was nothing tying her to our hometown, not after what happened to her parents. It really was commendable that she managed to stay all on her own for the last two years of high school – though she never really talked about it, we all sort of guessed that she didn’t want to go through the hassle of moving out of the country to be with her family after everything else that had suddenly turned her life over.

Everyone kind of knew there was something wrong with Elsa, even before her parents passed away. She was like a ghost. Everything would be normal, or as normal as they ever got with her, and then she would disappear from school for a week. She never talked to people any more than she had to, except for me and a few others.  I still have the image in my mind of her sitting at the lunch table in middle school, hunched in on herself like she was trying not to touch anyone or anything around her. Or maybe like she was hoping she could fold herself up so small she would disappear.

But Elsa was lovely, too. She had the most bizarre sense of humor, one so hit-or-miss you would either be in stiches on the floor or not even realize she had told a joke. She was sensitive, so obviously delicate that not even the most sarcastic teenagers made fun of her, either in her presence or out of it. She did nothing to warrant criticism, and made it seem unintentional. But she was socially conscious in all the right ways too; she, even after she was orphaned, talked with concern of people who were poorer than she.

Someday she wanted a big, sprawling house in the countryside, she told me, filled with cats and birds and sunlight and children. She loved to read and write but needed me to edit her literature essays because she couldn’t spell to save her life. To be honest, I loved being needed.

She was beautiful, too. Elsa seemed to miss all kinds of social cues, but the sight of her sheepish smile used to melt any annoyance I felt when she was absentee at my birthday or refused to eat cookies I had made for her when she discovered they didn’t contain chocolate.

I think the three things Elsa was most passionate about in life must have been reading, solitude, and chocolate.

She never really had an interest in other people; she didn’t listen to gossip because she simply didn’t care. Her friends were few in number, and she held them in great regard though they felt she was something of an acquaintance since she never socialized. We all sort of presumed she was simply not interested in sex or romance at that point in her life; once she was directly asked if she were asexual but merely spluttered embarrassedly until I rescued her. Whenever the topic of sex and love came up around the lunch table (you might imagine it frequently did – after all this lunch table was located in a high school and occupied by high schoolers) and Elsa was present, I strove to change the topic of conversation because I sensed it made her uncomfortable. “Elsa doesn’t want to hear that kind of stuff!” I often told Hans indignantly when he recounted the risqué gossip of the day (though I voraciously ate it up).

All of this was discomfiting to me because, naturally, I was madly in love with Elsa.

I kept in my mind a tally of the times anything had ever indicated she might feel the same way.

Item one: once in ninth grade I baked a batch of chocolate cupcakes and brought them to school. Gathered in the library before classes began, everyone took one. When Elsa bit down into hers she let loose a pleasured moan: “Oh, Anna…”. This was incredibly out-of-character for her and frankly shocked me. I came to the conclusion that she, innocent girl, did not know what such a vocalization sounded like to the ears of ordinary, sinful mortals.

Item two: once in tenth grade we engaged in a play-fight after school and she pushed my shoulders into the brick wall. I swore she was going to kiss me. Or rather, I prayed she was going to. Nothing happened. Item two can be dismissed as fantasy.

Item three: during the summer after tenth grade, one night we had a bonfire at Kristoff’s house. I left first because I had soccer practice in the morning. I made Elsa sit on my lap to her protest. When I got up to leave, she said “I love you.” The fire was loud and her voice, as always, was low. I probably misheard. Besides, friends say “I love you” to each other all the time.

In summary I was living a life of fantasy, cherry-picking moments and trying to mold the world into a shape more pleasing to me. I was fixated, I was obsessed, and I was fabricating a narrative that was completely fictional.

Then Elsa said, “Girls,” and blew my mind.

For the two years after that night at the bonfire, I made a distinct effort to get over Elsa. She simply wasn’t interested in me. And that became apparent as she withdrew; we rarely talked and she no longer came when invited to my get-togethers, even when I offered chocolate. I moved on, developed more unattainable girl-crushes, and was devastated when they were straight/taken/not into me/any combination of the above. Essentially, I lived your average high school lesbian’s lonely life and mostly forgot about Elsa in the most major capacity, though we still sometimes spent mornings sipping hot chocolate in the library before class. We had been friends to varying degrees since we were ten years old, and that wasn’t going to change because of a creepy crush on my part.

The summer after our senior year was very short for me and Elsa because she left for Norway halfway through. We had a going-away party of sorts, though it was very small since Elsa detested parties. I had a suspicion the guest of honor would not show up since she so hated social gatherings, but I confirmed with her before going - I had considered staying home, if she had planned to do the same, since I was so tired from working all morning.

God, am I glad I decided to go.

It was at Kristoff’s house again. I was reminded painfully of the bonfire night, two years in the past and still so salient a memory. And, again, we had a bonfire and s’mores. We played “Fuck, Marry, Kill” – surprisingly, quiet Elsa got very into the game, and I heard her say “fuck” more times that night than I had in the previous eight years of knowing her. She became particularly invested when the options were Disney princesses.

“No, I’d fuck Ariel,” declared Elsa, squishing a marshmallow between two graham crackers. “And kill Pocahontas.”

Olaf gasped, looking devastated. “Why do you have to kill Pocahontas?”

“Because, _duh,_ I’m gonna marry Mulan.”

“Duh,” we all chorused. Mulan was our unanimous pick for bride, no matter the options.

“Do I _have_ to fuck a princess?” complained the very gay Olaf.

“How could you _not_?” I asked incredulously, to a chorus of laughter.

The talk changed from hypothetical fucking princesses to hypothetical unproven rumors concerning the sexual activities and drug use of our classmates; this was of course a topic of conversation only taken up by nobodies who wished they had more sexual activities and drug use of their own to discuss and experience. Elsa went silent again, watching the sparks of the dying bonfire float up to heaven. I, too, was mesmerized.

When the fire was almost completely extinguished, Sven spoke up, emboldened by the darkness and the closeness and our imminent parting. “Guys,” he said seriously. “I don’t know what I’m going to do in college. I’m such a loser.”

“No you’re –“we all started, but he cut us off.

“Seriously,” Sven said. “I’ve never even kissed or dated anybody. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Me neither,” Elsa contributed softly, self-consciously, watching her elegant hands lace and unlace in the flickering light. “I have zero experience.”

“I swear it’ll be okay,” said Kristoff reassuringly. Somehow, coming from him, it sounded sincere. He probably had the most _experience_ of that kind of all of us, and he put his expertise to well-intentioned but usually unfortunate use in giving us impractical tips and setting us up on truly awful blind dates. “It’ll be okay,” said he. “I have a feeling that the girls will be all over Sven at college. Quiet mysterious type, you know.”

Sven started to protest but was cut off. Kristoff continued, “And Elsa will find the – wait, Elsa, do you like boys or girls?”

“Or both, or neither,” I said magnanimously, trying to keep my voice from sounding like a tightrope. I knotted my hand in the bottom hem of my sweater and repeated silently to myself _boys, boys, boys,_ readying myself for the answer that would knock away the last vestiges of the fantasies I had tried to kill off over the last few years. It must have taken her only a moment to respond, but it felt like an eternity; I held my breath.

_Boys,_ I thought.

“Girls,” said Elsa, her words carrying softly and with surprise into the night along with the fire’s last sparks, and everything exploded.

I was in shock. _Girls,_ I thought dumbly. _So she might -?_ I began the slow and painful process of revitalizing in my mind every hidden moment, every dusty piece of evidence that I had once collected to allow myself the luxury of imagining that Elsa might be as into me as I was into her. Once I had coveted and collected them to convince myself my feelings were reciprocated; then I had thrown a sheet over them, dismissed them as fantastic workings of my idle mind, and mostly forgotten, moving on to other hopeless straight-girl crushes.

Now I started remembering and reappraising. There was hope.

Olaf demanded, “How come you never said you were gay?”

“One more for the team!” I crowed, hiding my inner turmoil, and giving Olaf a huge high five. There was a giant stupid grin on my face which I tried in vain to erase. I did not look at Elsa.

Why had she not told me? I had come out of the closet very early, before high school, not so much out of any quality of bravery as an inability to keep my mouth shut. As a result I’d had a reputation as “the gay one” for a long time; this neither positively nor negatively impacted my life, since our school was quite accepting of these things, and merely eliminated the fuss of explaining to every new acquaintance that, no, I didn’t want to be set up with her brother.

Here I was, her gay best friend, and she had never so much as hinted as to her sexuality or to finding anyone attractive. It was no wonder we thought her asexual.

Olaf and Sven pressed forward on the topic, though I hovered around the fringes. Elsa could be feral – push her too hard, become too direct with her, and she would flee for the woods, disappearing from any meaningful role in my life for weeks until she could be sure whatever the issue was had blown over. As the conversation progressed, I began to see why Elsa had not said anything.

“How did you know?” Sven asked. “I mean, when did you find out?” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Didn’t everyone find out the same way – discovering butterflies in your stomach when the beautiful girl in gym class gets too close to you, or being unable to take your eyes off her bare legs?

“I, well, I’ve been…” Elsa started haltingly. I almost swallowed my tongue, shocked that she was actually trying to answer rather than slamming the door shut like she usual. There was something special about that night, something about knowing that the next morning she would get on a plane to Norway and we would most likely never see her again. All consequences were burnt to nothingness. She continued, “I’ve been in love with someone. Ever since seventh grade.”

“Seventh grade?” I gasped. “But that’s – six years.”

Elsa was sheepish. “Yeah,” she admitted, blushing. “I’m lame.”

No one even tried to counter that.

“Who?” demanded Olaf with his usual tactlessness.

“Not saying.”

“We won’t tell anybody!” wheedled my friend. “What happens here, stays here!”

“Still not saying.”

I tried to meet Kristoff’s eye but he did not look at me; I could not be sure if his avoidance was intentional. He knew that I had once liked Elsa, but I had phrased it utterly in the past tense, and said that I was over her. I hadn’t lied – I _was_ over her. So why did I so eagerly hang on to every word said that night, my stomach hardening into a little lead ball with every sentence that came out of Elsa’s mouth on the topic?

Elsa was still talking. “I didn’t ever think I’d, you know, have a girlfriend,” she said with no trace of self-pity or sadness. She pronounced it matter-of-factly, as if the condition of being single were so intrinsic to her that it was written on her birth certificate. “Even if I thought that the attraction was mutual, I’d never have pursued it.”

“Why’d you think you’d always be single?” I demanded, unable to stop myself. The heat of anger seeped into my voice and colored its edges orange. “You’re wonderful!”

She shrugged. There were too many people huddled around the last embers of the campfire. She’d open up to me later, maybe. Not that there really was a _later_ to be had, with her boarding pass already printed and her bag already packed.

The cool light of the moon and the warm lights of the house met on the planes of her face, making her eyes glimmer greyly and her skin pale, ghostly, otherworldly. I became aware of those gym-class butterflies making their presence known in the pit of my stomach, and wanted nothing more than to grab her and kiss her, to feel the gentleness of her mouth. Elsa’s mouth had always preoccupied me, and not just because I had thought about kissing her so often – her upper lip was fuller than her lower, which was unusual and lent a little exoticism to her Nordic face; perhaps it would not be attractive on people in general but it was certainly attractive on Elsa. Tonight I wanted to kiss her and in doing so confess without the words that seemed not to be coming to me, to admit to my feelings and make those sad, harrowed eyes soften.

But there were too many people around the dying ashes of the campfire.

                Elsa did not further elucidate her reasons for consigning herself to hermitage. Maybe she couldn’t find the words; maybe it was too personal. As close as I was to Elsa, we rarely talked about her personal issues, though everyone was aware she had more than enough to go around. The closest we ever got to discussing her parents was several months after it happened, when she finally returned to school. I’d said, “I’m sorry,” and she’d pretended not to hear me. The only time we’d ever talked about the future, our hopes and dreams, our fears, was one day when we skipped class and sat under a cherry tree. It was odd – I probably knew the most about Elsa out of every person in her life, and even that was a pittance.

                Mysterious, we called her. She always used to object to that description.

                When I tuned back in, Sven and Olaf were still grilling her about her tragically unrequited love. Normally I would have stepped in at this point to whisk her away from prying questions and save her the discomfort, but today my ears perked up to catch every halting word. What’s more, she seemed surprisingly willing to answer the type of inquiries she had avoided for the last six years of our overlapping lives. It was, I suspect, once again the inebriating effect of knowing a plane awaited her in the morning.

                “She just,” Elsa explained carefully, her beautiful voice tentative but neither fearful nor sad. “Made me happy.”

                “Awwwww,” we chorused.

                Sven said, “Seven years,” incredulously.

                “I never liked anyone else,” admitted the blonde girl. “Not in that way.” There was a rustling – assorted whispers of mixed awe and pity at Elsa’s devotion.

                Seven years, I thought. In my mind’s eye I transported myself back to middle school and built up our lunch table. Elsa and I always ate with the same group back then, though we didn’t really talk until our second year of high school. We were tangentially friends. I went around the lunch table in my mind, putting faces in their seats and highlighting each young girl as I went past. Whom, whom could it be?

                “Jessica,” I guessed.

                “No,” said Elsa.

                “Ella.”

                “No.”

                “Are you going to tell me if I guess?”

                “No.”

                Then a thought drifted across my mind like a tumbleweed and I gasped. There was a girl amongst our group who was beloved by boys and girls alike; she was always the subject of showers of anonymous Valentine’s candy. Once I had liked a girl who had liked her; she was, of course, solidly heterosexual. Of course, I was incredibly jealous of her popularity and bemoaned each time a new youngster fell into the clutches of her deep-set, mournful eyes.

                “It’s not Anastasia!” I cried, dread filling the cracks in my voice.

                Elsa looked affronted. “No,” she reassured me, knowing of my precarious relationship with our vivacious friend. “She’s great but – no.”

                I sighed with relief and settled into my folding chair, looking thoughtful out at faces I could barely see in the dark. People were talking: about the past year, about our upcoming transitions to college, about Elsa’s trip to Norway. What was the weather like? What foods would she eat (she was notoriously picky)? I didn’t care to listen to the responses.

                The last two girls at our middle school lunch table were me and my then-girlfriend, who had moved away the year following. Unless I was making a fallacy by assuming Elsa would have fallen for someone in our group of friends, the only candidate for her long-suffering true love was – me. I hardly dared to believe it. My heart beat double- or triple-time against my ribcage; I made myself breathe deeply, sure that my friends could hear my elevated level of excitement.

                I was uncharacteristically quiet all night; likely my friends assumed that I was depressed about Elsa’s departure the next morning. But I was not – I was scheming. How to get her alone, how to extract that vital piece of information and close off the last regret, the last tie to our younger years that left me hanging as if over a chasm, as if held up by a dainty string of floss? My thumbs rubbed nervously against each other as we chatted and prepared for bed. Olaf wore hot pink boxers with not an ounce of shame.

                I laid down in my sleeping bag on the mattress on the floor, careful not to intrude upon Olaf’s dominion next to me. I kept time with my racing heart, counting out a hundred beats, then two hundred, then three in the pitch darkness. My head tilted towards where Elsa lay stretched out on the couch, my eyes as wide as I could stretch them, desperate to let in any glimmer of light that would let me see if she were awake or asleep. When I was sure that enough time had passed and Olaf’s breathing had slowed to a moderate, even rhythm, I crawled sideways out of my bag and edged through the sliding door to stand in Kristoff’s mother’s garden, lit by moonlight.

                My feet taking pleasure in the softness of the grass there, I leaned against the siding of the house and waited, my ears on alert for the sound of the door or the glimmer of blonde hair in the half-light. I imagined it a hundred, a thousand times – Elsa dainty in her oversized shirt, picking her way through the plants to come stand with me. Elsa, eyes wise, coming silently to kiss me up against the side of the house without a word. Elsa crying that she had to leave the next day, Elsa laughing with glee that we had come to this open understanding even so late in our relationship. Elsa’s skinny arms wrapped around my waist.

                I imagined it so many times that I hardly believed it when it happened.

                “Hi, you,” she said with the utter calmness of someone about to die from nerves. “Can’t sleep?” Her hands were clasped in front of her, her knuckles so white that they appeared to glow in the moonlight. She was greyscale in this light, ephemeral. I wanted to reach out and sweep her into my longing arms, but I had not the courage.

                “Hey,” I said, not answering her. “Ready to go tomorrow?”

                Her expression did not change. I imagined that perhaps her shoulders sat a little more depressed at the thought of tomorrow. But her words contradicted my imagination: “I’m excited. I really want to travel, you know. To see the world.” She gestured fancifully into the air at her own trite words.

                “What about leaving your beau? Or belle, I suppose.”

                She stiffened.

                “I think I know who it is,” I said, a smile beginning to play at the corner of my mouth. But I was nervous; what if I was wrong? Why didn’t she just _tell_ me, right now? It was so, so obvious how I felt – why couldn’t she spare me the torment?

                “Mmmmh,” Elsa muttered noncommittally, her eyes dropping to the grassy floor and her bare feet making toe-shaped indents in the loam.”

                “If I point in her direction, will you tell me?”

                My friend, my dear friend, looked up at me again with a mix of intrigue and terror in her eyes. She was paralyzed, I think. She was so, so unused to talking about her feelings with anyone that I don’t believe she knew how to put words to the whispering, clotting, churning feelings inside of her – much less taking the enormous step to force those words to come to her mouth in the presence of others.

                I pointed one declarative finger to the west. “Is she there?” I asked.

                Elsa shook her head, blonde hair falling to frame her face. She looked so precious, so earnest, so exposed. I wanted to stroke her cheek, to touch her moonlit skin and see if it were real, see if I could really touch the apparition that had floated in and out of my life for so long. I could not believe Elsa, shy Elsa, who I used to think about every night before going to sleep, was really standing there outside of Kristoff’s house in her nightclothes, talking to me about a lesbian crush. It was unreal, and I licked every second off it off my silver spoon with eager clarity.

                I pointed to the east. “Is she there?”

                Another negative response.

                I pointed upward to the blue-black sky, fighting to keep my face straight. “Alien girl?” I asked. “Galifreyan?”

                Elsa giggled and said aloud, “No.”

                Then I turned my finger inward; this was the moment, but I had gone so far that I could not possibly turn back. I pressed my finger solidly against my chest, over my heart, and forced myself to meet Elsa’s eyes.

                “I think she’s probably here,” I said softly. I couldn’t believe my own daring. The night had been warm, June being kind to us, but my nervousness made my skin feel frigid and I resisted the urge to wrap my arms around myself.

                Elsa looked at the ground, her chin tucked so far into her chest that it seemed she was trying to bore a hole right into her heart and escape from this awkward situation in the most tragic way possible. “You might, um,” she breathed in a tiny voice. “Not be so wrong, then.”

                I whirled around comically, looking behind me with wide eyes. “Where?” I cried as loud as I dared with a house full of sleeping people only feet away. “Is she invisible?”

                Elsa giggled and found herself able to meet my gaze. I smiled softly, tenderly, drifting my eyes over her every feature and trying to catalogue it, trying to etch into my heart how much I loved every piece of her at that moment. Suddenly struck with an urge to be close to her, I grabbed both her soft, un-callused hands in mine and pulled her along with me.

                “Come on,” I said, and pulled her out into the backyard. I ran as fast as I could with her dragging along behind me, hands still clutching mine, and came to rest at the foot of a huge oak tree. “I always liked this tree,” I told her. “I call him Oliver.”

                “Hi, Oliver,” Elsa said, deadpan. She reached out a hand and pumped one of his low-hanging branches as if shaking a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

                We sat at the base of the tree and, as I was just about to open my mouth and spill out all the energetic thoughts clambering for access to my vocal cords, Elsa asked, “How did you figure it out? I mean, when did you - ?”

                “Elsa,” I said flatly. “You’re hella obvious.”

                She blushed. It looked gray-purple in the nighttime light.

                “No, I mean – I kinda thought sometimes, but I didn’t want to, you know, _believe_ it until tonight. When you said you liked girls.”

                “Yeah, well,” she said. It was impossible to read her voice. She sounded bitter, maybe, or regretful, or just resigned. “I never thought there was a reason to tell anyone.”

                “But –“ I protested, throwing my arms dramatically wide. “Love!”

                “I never thought I would be with anyone,” she repeated.

                “But why? You’re pretty, you’re funny, you’re smart-“ I was cut off by Elsa scoffing. “Hey,” I continued. "I may not be the most objective party, but you have so many wonderful qualities. I mean, I’m awesome and _I_ like you. Don’t you trust my judgment?”

                “Whatever, Anna,” groaned Elsa. When I opened my mouth to continue my tirade about Elsa’s magnificence, a most marvelous thing happened. She loved me, I was sure now. I was her best friend, the living person who was closest to her. I was also somewhat annoying her with my overwhelming positivity at that particular moment. And even the most solitary people need someone to confide in – someone to share a secret with so that it might weigh less heavily on their minds.

                 I opened my mouth, and Elsa hit me with a snowball to shut me up. The snowy projectile made impact with my throat (I would guess that she had aimed for my opened mouth) and began to melt coldly down my chest.

                “Why, you!” I roared in mock outrage, and sprang to my feet. I was quick and strong, athletic, and I had been the playground champion of girls’ snowball fights when I was in elementary school. What I lacked in accuracy I made up for in fervor; I was ready to show Elsa who was boss.

                But when I went to grab a pile of supplies for my weaponry, my hands brushed only soft grass, dotted with unblooming dandelions ready to tell me how many boyfriends I would have. I looked at the early summer greenery, at the melting snow dashed across my chest, and finally at Elsa. She raised her hands to make a small circle, her deep blue eyes boring into mine, and rotated her wrists. A particle of dust, or leaf, or air, lit by moonlight, danced within the sphere she made with her spinning hands; then another joined its brother, and another, until each successive bite of natural material cohered with the others and reflected the white glow of the moonlight.

                It was not reflecting, I realized, when the object was nearly the size of a fist. It was _white._ It was snow. It was June, for Christ’s sake.

                “Elsa,” I breathed. She flattened out her palms forcefully and the snow broke apart, dissipating into the grass. She looked at me, waiting. I too, was waiting, for the right words to come to me. Perhaps I was waiting for Newton to appear and explain the last law of thermodynamics, one I hadn’t yet learned in school, one that would explain what I had just seen happen with my very own eyes. Perhaps I was waiting for the Doctor. Perhaps I was waiting to wake up from a dream, or for Hans to pinch me and tell me he was never tripping with me again.

                “Elsa,” I repeated. “Dude. That’s so cool. I mean, literally, _so cool.”_

She was too surprised to laugh. She looked helpless.

                I didn’t want to push her, my little, wild creature. So I walked slowly, calmly toward her with my hands where she could see them, and when she didn’t flinch I slid down the big oak trunk beside her and took a seat with my feet folded beneath me in the dirt. When I felt a suitable amount of time had passed, I dared to open my mouth again.

                “So, uh, Elsa?” I said quietly, not even trying to disguise the awkwardness of my voice. “Do you mind, er, explaining?”

                “It’s just something I always had,” she said. She didn’t sound happy about it. _Something I had,_ like a disease. She had _magic!_ “I can make snow and ice. I can change the temperature. It happens when I’m upset, or angry, or scared.”

                “You can – control it?”

                “A little. I can make small things like snowballs, but if I try to do something big or a bunch of things at once – it all sort of…blizzards,” Elsa explained, flatly, as if she were asked that question every day. “And the most powerful stuff, the scary stuff, happens when I’m not trying. When I’m just – overwhelmed.”

                She seemed a little overwhelmed right then. But I couldn’t stop myself. “Why do you talk about it like it’s some awful thing?” I demanded, put my hand on her knee. She did not move one inch; from her practiced stillness I could tell that she was trying very, very hard not to flinch away, and I appreciated it. “It’s magic, isn’t it? Actual, legit magic?”

                Frost began to accumulate on the blades of grass around us. I shivered and leaned into her, not considering the possibility that my touch would frighten her and make it worse. But she did not shy away; after a moment she softened into me as best she could, awkwardly wrapping her arm around my shoulder. Her hand hung limply; she, I could see, had no idea how to proceed; she recognized her own ignorance, and was ashamed - which compounded upon itself to make her the most awkward hug-giver in existence.

                But she looked down at me, and I out over the lawn. I could feel her eyes etching her gaze into every inch of my face. I was still waiting for an answer, but with Elsa long pauses were just part of conversation. One often had to wait upwards of a minute, or even five, for an answer to a serious question. Sometimes Elsa got lost in her own head and would never respond. Other times, she was just formulating the correct response and got caught up in semantics, or became indecisive about what she wanted to say.

                She was a painfully deliberate creature. I loved her.

                “It’s magic, isn’t it?” I whispered again, trying to pull her out of her reverie.

                “No,” said she harshly. “Well, I guess it is. Whatever _magic_ is. But, Anna, don’t you see? It makes me _afraid_ of everything.”

                “It makes you -?”

                “I’m terrified to exist anywhere people can see me in case, I don’t know, I’m having a bad day and _boom!_ I make it snow and everybody finds out,” Elsa said. “Imagine what the kids at school would say.”

                “Oh God.”

                “Or the authorities,” continued my beautiful blonde witch, sounding like she had read one too many spy novels. “I’d be shipped off to God-knows-where for testing or whatever. Probably for the rest of my life. You have no idea how hard it was to keep the road from icing over during my driver’s test. All I could think of was – if this guy finds out, I’m going to be locked up.”

                “They wouldn’t lock you up.”

                “Anna,” Elsa said seriously, fixing my eyes with her incredible blue ones. “People like us get beaten up on the streets every day because we’re a little unusual, and I’m a _lot_ more unusual than _that_.”

                It took me a long time to figure out what she meant by _people like us._ Teenage witches with snarky sidekicks (a population comprised of me, Elsa, Sabrina, and Salem)? Blondes who dare to be friends with redheads? Then I remembered the first revelation of the night, one that was dwarfed by its successor.

                Elsa meant gay people. _People like us._ Us. Us – both gay. Because Elsa was gay, like me. Because I was in love with Elsa and she with me. _We_ were madly in love with _each other._ We, us – together.

                I was filled with a buttery warmth so delicious it was almost painful. I wanted to squeeze her to me, to wrap her body so tightly in my arms that she would sink into me, that our skins and hearts and brains would meld and she would be subsumed into me, so that I could have her forever, so that she would never worry.

                “Anna, why are you smiling like that? Did I say something dumb?”

                “No,” I said. _I just remembered how much I love you,_ I thought, but it was too early to say those last three words aloud. “I just –“ I reached out and grabbed her hand, running my thumb along its edges and planes and valleys, relishing the smoothness of her wrist. I delighted in finally, finally being able to _touch_ her without guilt cracking like a whip over my head – because now I knew she felt them too, these feelings that threatened to drown me. I poured myself a bath of my delight and sank into it.

                I brought her hand to my face and, slowly, watching her eyes, I pressed my lips to it.

                I had never thought it could be erotic to touch someone else so simply. My mouth touched things all day, to a much more intimate degree than the barest kiss I had just laid upon the back of Elsa’s hand: food, my own hand, pillows, et cetera. This surface was like any other, really, despite its warmth and texture. But all the same a warmth, a friction between relaxation and giddy excitement, melted its way through my insides and down into my core, where I was surprised to become aware of it. It wasn’t as if anyone were kissing _me,_ I thought. How could my own action, so mundane, precipitate such a response?

                It was not the physical act that plucked at my strings. It was knowing that what my lips brushed was a part of Elsa, this beautiful girl who somehow loved me, who had somehow managed to love me for a full one-third of her short lifespan. It was knowing that I kissed her hand with grace, that I revered this skin, as I revered every inch of my friend. I pressed my love and worship into the back of her hand with my lips.

                “You liked me for a long time,” I said aloud, my voice so quiet as to seem hoarse. As we sat against the oak tree, I felt my voice resonate from a deep cavity in my chest, quiet and playful and intimate in a way I had never heard before. Every word came out of my mouth shaped with the care of a jeweler. “Six years. Six years ago I was a different person.”

                “You got older,” said Elsa. “You changed, I changed. You grew out of that stupid phase, with the –“

                “Don’t you dare! We don’t talk about those dark times!”

                “Alright, alright,” Elsa laughed lightly. “You changed in some ways, but you’re still Anna. And you only got more and more beautiful.”

                She blushed. She looked like she couldn’t believe she had said that last bit aloud. I couldn’t believe it, either.

                My heart raced ahead of me, looking up at the stars that night with Elsa sitting at my side. I wanted it to last forever. We could do this, we could make long distance work. We’d loved each other for years – weren’t we meant to be? I had money saved up from my summer job – I could fly up and see her, or she could fly down to see me at university. The wedding would be on a cliff out West, overlooking the Pacific with the sunset fading into the water as guests nibbled on cupcakes from a cupcake tower (in lieu of a cake, since that way we could provide many flavors to choose among). We would invite our English teacher, who loved us both and would be overjoyed to find out two of her favorite students were getting married. How many kids should we have? I wanted perhaps two, but I knew Elsa dreamed of a large family. Maybe, in the back of my mind, I wanted a big family, too…

                “It seems kinda shitty,” I said, slowly, tentatively. “That we only got, you know, tonight. Both of us waited for a long time.”

                She almost-whispered, “Yeah.”

                “We could…” I trailed off, before gathering my courage again. “We could do long distance. Don’t you think?”

                Elsa looked at me with those amazing blue eyes. She looked at me like a dog looks at its master, like she would follow me to the ends of the Earth, like in that moment she would do any ridiculous thing I asked of her. It was incredible. “Yes,” she breathed. “Let’s try.”

                Elsa was an incurable romantic. She believed in true love’s power and all of that; it turned out that I did, too. That night (and nearly a week following) I was giddy, euphoric, transcended to a higher plane of existence. Everything seemed so _big._ The stars speckling the night sky whispered of possibilities, of other places and experiences yet undiscovered; suddenly my life was bigger than silly old me – it was a spectacle, a dramatic, painfully-unrequited love story with a happy conclusion. I was no longer living for myself; I was living for a dream, for a beautiful girl halfway across the world, for something as grand and old as l _ove_.

                When I kissed Elsa goodnight on the cheek, her face nearly split with the thousand-watt brilliance of her huge, goofy grin. She didn’t move; she sat stock-still, frozen, looking like all her dreams were suddenly coming true in front of her very own eyes. My heart bubbled. I wanted to make her smile like that forever; I wanted to fulfill her dreams until we were old and decrepit, sitting together on the porch with a house full of books and cats and dust.

                It would have been nice. That night it became all I ever wanted.


	2. Goodbyes, Again

I had known Elsa for eight years before we began dating. But some things I only learned after; perhaps because she grew to trust me in a new way, or simply because I felt I had the right, or the privilege, to push her harder when she left questions unanswered.

                As she had said, she was afraid of everything.

                I learned that she was incredibly skittish in even the most barely-social of situations. If she was refilling her gas tank and decided she wanted a candy bar, it was the beginning of a death-match between her sweet tooth and the shaking, paralyzing nerves that accompanied having to complete a transaction with the guy behind the counter.

                “Mama used to have me go do it and then say, _that wasn’t that bad, was it?”_ Elsa explained to me, running her finger agitatedly over her thumb again and again, as she was wont to do when uncomfortable. I noticed a thick callus on the knuckle of her right thumb, but not her left – a residue of years of the nervous habit, performed only by one side of her body. “But the thing is, it _was_ that bad. It _is always_ that bad.”

                It was a good thing she’d lived down the street from her aunt and uncle, back in our hometown. Otherwise, I think she would have starved to death. Elsa was the kind of person who would stay in a burning house rather than make a phone call to 911 (she detested phone calls), though she had gotten more daring over time.

                “You’re scared of – of doing the ice thing, accidentally, in public?” I asked her.

                “Maybe it started like that,” she sighed. “Back when my control wasn’t as good. But now it’s just an association – I know having people around me is bad. I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want anyone to know I exist.”

                I frowned. “I’m glad you exist.”

                “Me too. I _like_ existing. I just don’t want anyone to _notice_ me while I’m doing it _.”_

We were sitting side-by-side on a bench, placed decoratively on the quaint market street that so well characterized the small-ish town in which Elsa had chosen to go to college. Her father’s cousin, who had been very close with him and pitied his child after his passing, had volunteered to take her in to save money on rent. I was glad – I did not trust Elsa to take care of herself. But the relative did not know about her powers, so the girl was now faced with near-constant anxiety about letting herself slip.

                When she had first conjured that little snowball, I hadn’t realized the extent of the suffering her magic had caused her. Ah, a snowball, how cute. That’s handy. But every single day, Elsa was wracked with the fear that accompanied being so markedly different; it wasn’t entirely the powers, I think. Elsa would have been a shy, skittish girl regardless of what paranormal powers thrummed in her veins. But they certainly didn’t help.

                She had pretty good control now, and rarely conjured anything more than a thin coat of frost when under stress. She’d said something about an online course, a therapist who knew the value of discretion, and the earthly magic of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. But as a child –

                “I was five years old,” she said quietly. We sat side-by-side on her uncle’s couch, gazing at our reflections on the glass sliding door, trying to peer into the pitch blackness outside. There was a field and a forest, in which the dogs (and we girls) loved to frolic; but for all we could see beyond the barely-lit porch, there might as well have been a void, a cliff, an ocean. “When it happened. I was playing outside, playing with Henrik.”

                Henrik was her younger brother, who had gone to live with their family in Norway after – the incident. He must have been just entering high school as Elsa and I made our debut into higher education; he came to visit every summer. He was notoriously hyperactive, and he was obsessed with me for some reason, following me all over the house and begging me to play with him, which I indulged even when I was too old to play little boys’ games. Elsa told me he wanted to make me his wife one day; I supposed he’d have to settle for sister-in-law.

                “I was outside, playing with Henrik,” continued Elsa. I could smell the shampoo she used; she always smelled clean, like soap, and perhaps it was associational, but it sent a pulse of electricity through me. Sometimes when I was away from her, I would catch a hint of a similar soap and be struck with a sudden bout of missing her intensely. “And we were playing tag. He was getting away from me, and then – I put out my hand – and he slipped on a patch of ice. It was summer. At first, we didn’t know it was me. We sat around looking at it, trying to figure out where it had come from. Then things like that happened more and more – my milk would freeze over when I didn’t want to drink it; when Mama made me do chores, her flowers would get killed by frost. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

                “I didn’t say you did,” I said quickly. I had been looking intensely at her, examining the way her pupils twitched this way and that while she told me her story. I was trying to imagine the confusion, the fear, little Elsa and Henrik must have felt when random patches of winter started appearing out-of-season in their lives. Elsa found it very difficult to talk about these things; I could see the stress in her jaw, in her flickering eyes, in her twitching fingers, despite her easy tone of voice.

                “Yeah. Eventually we figured out – that it was _me,”_ she told me, looking down at her hands. “I couldn’t control it, not at all. It was just like, like, the winter was following me around. Like it was stalking me.”

                I breathed, “I can’t imagine,” my head nestled under hers. She wrapped one arm awkwardly around me.

                “It got worse. You, uh, you know Henrik,” Elsa said with an affected calm, as if she had rehearsed this story in front of her mirror. Knowing Elsa, she probably had. “We fought a lot, especially when we were little.”

                I could imagine it. Henrik, with his inability to sit still, would have been the most annoying of little brothers, and Elsa, so withdrawn and self-contained, the most easily-annoyed of elder sisters. They were a match made in heaven.

                “He, well, he was a trigger. For my…” Elsa did not like to say _magic,_ but there was no other word to describe it _._ “He’d push me to my breaking point, and I’d lash out. I – I really hurt him. I _wanted_ to hurt him, when he got on my nerves. And I, I really did.”

                “Elsa,” I said softly, my voice coming again from that deep place in my chest. “It’s not your fault. Siblings always fight.”

                “Yeah, but they don’t usually –“

                “You didn’t mean to,” I said.

                “I _did,”_ she retorted.

                There was a long pause in which we just looked at each other. I knew she hadn’t meant to really hurt him; no little kid can really hold the reins on his or her emotions, but while most siblings might end up with a bruise or a red mark, Elsa’s unfortunate brother was subject to a lot more than the physical power present in a young girl’s sticklike arms and legs. I was an only child, but, hell, I’d gotten into fights on the playground. If I’d had magic, I’d have done a lot of damage to my opponents without even realizing what I was doing.

                “Yeah,” Elsa said when she was ready to continue. I was finding more and more ways to get her to open up to me; with an ever-increasing number of data points in my set, I was finding the algorithm for the right amount of time to wait for her, when to push, when to let it go, how to wheedle her open like a bobby pin in a lock. “I spent a lot of time alone, growing up. After one time when – Henrik…I…my parents sort of tried to split us up, keep me away from people in case my...thing…was revealed.”

                I could see in her eyes that she was thinking, _In case I hurt someone._

“I think that’s why you’re so stressed around people,” I said, grabbing her hand and rubbing comforting circles into its back. My movements always somehow became slow, measured, graceful when I was with her. She needed that kind of reassuring movement; I began to subconsciously adjust for her. “You’re just out of practice. Spent too long alone, forgot how the whole people thing worked. But you can learn.”

                “Maybe,” said she. She didn’t believe me.

                I forget how we got to it. But there was something she couldn’t tell me, one last secret; I made her promise to tell me before we got married. She laughed and said, “Of course. Before the wedding.” I was joking; the likelihood of us getting married was so small (we had only been together for a few months and seen each other only a few days out of all that) – but I was not really joking. From where I stood, my present, past, and future was filled to the brim with Elsa.

                Of course, she would not have brought up a secret at all if there was no small prickling part of her that wanted to tell me. And I, insatiably curious from the day I was born, pressed her bit-by-bit all evening to tell me. Over spaghetti, I asked, “Did you kill someone?” After, while we watched a movie, I said, “You became a hooker after your parents died to support yourself.” When we sat on the couch, looking out into a night we could not resolve with our weak, easily-confused eyes, I waited for her to tell me.

                “Why can’t you tell me?” I demanded, knowing that I was becoming annoying. “I won’t judge you for it.” I had no idea what her secret was; we were beyond secrets, were we not?

                “Other people…have reacted badly…to things like this,” she said. I wanted to hunt those other people down and give them a piece of mine. Instead, I waited, looking at her; it must have been five minutes before she went on. Elsa tended to just sit there like a statue, running the words over in her head to pick the perfect way to bring the messy, wordless bundle of thoughts and feelings inside her to the outside world. Feral, she was – not entirely fit for society, for our norms of expression. Eventually she sighed and went on, “In eleventh grade – it was bad. You know how it was.”

                That was the year I had seen her rarely; I had shut her out of my life to try to get over her, but she had disappeared under her own agency as well. She was barely in school; she was ghostly, she lost weight. That was the year -

                “After my parents died,” she continued. I had never heard her say the phrase _my parents died_ before, nor any euphemism of it. “I got really bad. I froze my whole room over – Auntie got frostbite trying to check on me. I lost all control of my powers; I couldn’t leave the house.”

                I thought of Elsa, curled into a ball on her bedroom floor surrounded by snowbanks so cold they had frozen solid. I held her tighter to me, trying to force my body heat upon her so that she might never be so cold again.

                “One night,” said she, shakily. “I took a bunch of pills. I got scared; after ten minutes I threw them up.”

                “On purpose?” I said tenderly, to verify that staying alive had been her conscious decision and not her stomach’s.

                “Yeah,” she affirmed, not looking at me, paler than usual.

                I could see how suicide would seem like the answer in her situation; I was so, so glad she had decided it wasn’t. In my mind’s eye I saw Elsa in her stocking feet, descending the old creaky stairs of her parents’ empty house, her beautiful ocean-blue eyes blank and lifeless. She was gaunt; she treaded as if she were already part of the afterlife. I watched her open the medicine cabinet, and reach calmly for a bottle as if she were only taking an Advil for a headache, and down the entire thing; then another, then another. My beautiful girl, my lighthouse, the reason I no longer feared death – she _courted_ it. I saw death growing in her dull eyes, her emaciated body, her expressionless face. She went to the couch and laid back against it, closing her eyes and folding her hands over her stomach, waiting for relief to come.

                “No,” I whispered. “I’m so glad – that you didn’t…”

                “Me too,” she said, just as softly. When my words came out of my mouth, they did so brokenly and in uneven chunks, my chest wracked by sobs threatening to make me unintelligible.

                “I’m so glad,” I said again through my tears, which grew hotter and faster every moment I spent dwelling on the idea of Elsa slide-stepping in her socks on those hardwood floors, slide-stepping toward the medicine cabinet. How could I not dwell?

                Elsa grabbed my head, almost violently, and pulled me against her chest. She held me there like a baby, like a mother comforting her child, my head tucked underneath hers and my cheek pressed to her breast. _Safe_ , said her embrace, _I’ve got you_. She was consoling _me_ – how backwards! Her heartbeat pounded against my ear, warm and red and regular and so _real,_ like listening for the ocean in a seashell. It was music to my ears, the most wonderful music. Even when my tears stained her sweatshirt, I did not pull away.

                There on that couch, we clung together, facing the darkness beyond the sliding glass door. I imagined we were on a ship’s deck, braving the storm, gripping each other to hold on to life itself while the sea and wind and rain tried to tear us into the dark, infinitely deep water below. That couch was our ship; and the world, our storm. It was so real, my fantasy, so visceral, that my head started to spin from the rocking of the waves.

                That was the first time I went to visit Elsa up north. The third time was my last.

                She was getting worse. I could see it in how she tolerated my company less and less well, increasingly going for long walks by herself to calm down; hosting me tired her so much that she went to bed only a little after eight in the evening. She was tired every day, all the time, even when I was not there. My sweet Elsa had a lot to contend with – living in a new city, being a first-year college student, _and_ having her first relationship _ever._ It would have been hard for anyone. For Elsa, who quaked in her snowboots every time she left the house, it was terrifying.

                Her powers started manifesting randomly. As I made dinner, she did homework; when she reached math, her least favorite subject, her pencil frosted over and a chill wind blew my hair back and forth. When we spoke seriously about what we would do after college (something Elsa was anxious about to no end), it became so cold in the room that I shivered until she lent me a sweatshirt. Walking around her tiny campus, the mere sight of someone she had once argued with meant that my hand froze over in hers, until she realized what she had done and kissed it all better.

                There were problems between us, though. The distance was hard for me and harder for her. I had a wandering eye and on two occasions I drunkenly kissed someone else, after which I felt intensely guilty and immediately told Elsa, who cried. I wanted Elsa by my side all the time, and I was about to exhaust my bank account trying to find ways to come see her; perhaps I did not fully integrate into my own college life because on the back of my mind was always Elsa, Elsa, Elsa. Elsa’s smile, her soapy smell. That sweet thing she had whispered into my ear when I left the last time. Her hair falling in front of her eyes, and her bashful expression as she pushed it back into place. When we were together, I savored every moment with her like a dying man eating his last meal – with that most fervent, most basic desire _to live,_ I loved her.

                As for Elsa – she described it so: being apart from me hurt, because she wanted to be with me. But being with me also hurt, because being with people stressed her to an indescribable degree. She knew I was not scared of her magic, but she was nervous to let them free around me. I think she was nervous to let them free even when she was alone; Elsa feared everyone around her, but most of all she feared herself.

                I can’t imagine being Elsa.

                There were problems between us, too, in the realm of physicality. I wanted her and I made it no secret, not after one late and very wasted night when my friends had allowed me possession of my phone and I had decided it was a great time to text her. Elsa didn’t drink or smoke or dance or party, and though she said she didn’t mind if I did – I was never so sure. She worried about me constantly. She pinned newspaper articles about girls being robbed or assaulted in the somewhat-sketchy area where I lived and demanded that I take precautions. Walking home at four in the morning with a bloodstream alcoholic enough to take shots from was not a precaution.

                I wanted her. My sexuality had laid somewhat dormant for years, as I struggled with something that was not so much internalized homophobia as an internalization of the Puritan attitude so prevalent in our society that sex, no matter whom the object of desire is, is abominable. But Elsa – had awakened me. And the fact that she returned my affections mitigated the guilt I felt when heat gathered between my legs and splashed redly across my face, when I used the restroom during a visit to Elsa’s and found my underwear less than spotless.

                But Elsa was not ready. She would probably never be ready.

                I think in theory she wanted me, if not quite as much as I did her. She wrote flirty texts late at night and made suggestive motions when there was no opportunity to act on them. But in any real-world scenario, Elsa was too overcome by the terror that plagued her when she was in the presence of another person to relax enough to feel sexy. I would have liked to think that I was the exception to her social issues, but, though she loved me with all her heart, I was no exception. My presence in the same room made her clam up as much as any other person outside of her immediate family. Hard to get _in the mood_ when you’re sweating through your T-shirt, isn’t it?

                Frustration, and the knowledge that neither of us would do anything about it, made both of us testy. We kissed, sometimes, brief and tight-lipped kisses. She was almost too awkward to participate, much less instigate anything more. And I – pushing Elsa beyond her limit, sexually speaking, was my worst nightmare. I feared that her love for me, combined with her tentativeness in general, meant that she would not tell me if I made her uncomfortable, if she wanted to stop – and how could I forgive myself if I hurt her? So I dawdled at the dawn of sexuality, and stuck with actions that were nearly chaste enough to be shared between sisters, scared even to kiss her properly without her permission.

                But we grew close. We were not lifelong friends, but we were not far off. Eight years we had known each other; and now we spent the entire length of our visits inseparable. I think I knew her better than any other living soul on Earth; and, I believe, she knew me better than anyone save my mother. She had never told anyone, neither family nor friend nor doctor, about her suicide attempt. She trusted me with any burden she could place upon my shoulders, any secret, any rambling rant about _Hamlet_ or some TV show or her thoughts on whether aqua was more blue or more green.

                We knew each other intimately in some ways, if not the usual.

                One day as we set off to drive to the café for a cup of hot chocolate, Elsa looked about the room, confused, and blinked. “Under the end table,” I said. She went over and retrieved a pair of reading glasses from where the cat had knocked them off the night before.

                As Elsa was filling out a form online, she reached for her purse, but before she could touch it I said, “It’s in your coat pocket,” and she investigated to find it was so – she had left her wallet there when paying for our meal earlier.

                I cherished these old-married-couple moments. They were gems; I collected them, I hoarded them, and they made my heart clench in the most delicious, tender way. I knew where all her shit was better than she; it was a bizarre, loving pride that swelled in my chest.

                The one night it was no longer worth it.

                We’d talked all weekend about our problems, our fears. I cried a lot; she rubbed her knuckle with so much agitation that her callus nearly ripped off.

                Whenever Elsa talked about the stresses of our relationship, I asked at the end, “Is it still worth it?” The first time, she’d said “Of course.” The second, “Yes.” Then, “I don’t know.”

                “Are you breaking up with me?” I asked. The words hadn’t fully made their way to my brain yet; on the last syllable they made contact, and my voice broke as a sob forced its way from my throat. I should have listened, shouldn’t I? Every time we visited each other she talked about how being around me made her nervous, how she was at her breaking point. It was not just ranting, not just catharsis. It was a real concern pushing its way to the surface bit by bit.

                “Are you breaking up with me?” I asked.

                “I hadn’t decided,” she said softly, her voice cracking with the last word. She looked so mournful, sitting there on her bed with messy sheets twirled around her ankles. Elsa was so, so tired. I could see it, I could see that our relationship, among other things, was draining her. But I still wanted more than anything for her to stay with me.

                “Anna, I have a lot of challenges in my life right now,” said Elsa, looking at me with eyes that were empty of tears but perhaps all the more sorrowful for their dryness. Dry and sad; a sunny day full of misery. “I really need to work on being a functional human being right now. Getting a job, taking care of myself…getting control of my powers.”

                “And you can’t do that with me,” I finished bitterly.

                “No,” she agreed flatly. It was a stab in my side.

                I begged, I pleaded, I cried and hyperventilated on her floor. I wish to God I’d been able to avoid doing that. Elsa always hated the sound of crying. But I couldn’t stop - I was watching the primary source of my joy melt away; I was watching the erasure not only of our relationship as it existed then but of what I’d dreamed of, five, ten, fifty years in the future. My lighthouse was dimming; swamped by the rising tide. The first night at Kristoff’s, when Elsa had come out and I’d kissed her on the cheek, was the first time in my life I was not afraid of death. My life would be one well spent – it would be worth dying – to make Elsa’s face split open in that foolish grin again. I would go gladly with the Grim Reaper if I could cheer up Elsa’s gloomy life until we were old and wrinkled; heavens knows she deserved a little happiness after everything she’d been through.

Elsa knew me like no one else, and I was losing her completely - not only as a girlfriend but as a person, because Elsa was not coming back home. Her aunt and uncle had moved; she had no reason to come back to our hometown. She would go to Norway in the summer, and then back to college up north.

I would never see her again.

                “I love you,” I murmured into her jacket while we waited for my bus to come.

                She said, “I love you, too,” clutching me close to her with so much might that it hurt. _I love you_ used to soften my worries, but not on that day. It used to mean _I love you, so everything will be okay; I love you, so we will be together no matter what; I love you, and I will always be here._ That day it was only three words, three words as true as any oath, but only those three.

                “I love you, too,” she said, and I only sobbed harder. I wish I hadn’t cried so much; it really wasn’t necessary. Elsa did not cry in front of me, not once except for when she said goodbye as she left for Norway.

                I tried to calm down, but even my bones were fretful. Eventually I pulled away and looked at her, drinking in the sight of Elsa. She looked like a child with her rosy cheeks and big eyes, swathed in a suede jacket that was too big for her, hair impossibly perfect (as always) but red-purple bags under her eyes. Like an exhausted child, I thought. A child laborer. I stared hard at her, trying to imprint that image of her onto my brain, trying to stencil my last glimpse ever of Elsa into every atom of my being so that I would not forget – I would not forget how beautiful she was. I would not forget how she made _me_ feel beautiful, invincible, like I could do something grand and good with my life.

                Elsa noticed me staring, and looked at me questioningly. I wanted to explain, but I could not form the words, so I only shrugged and went on.

                I pleaded, “Write to me.”

                “I will,” she pledged cautiously. “It might be a bad idea – but I’ll write.”

                Into the thick fabric of her jacket I breathed, thickly, through my tears, “Be strong, my girl.”

                She kissed me goodbye, and I got on my bus.

                _I’ll write,_ she’d said.

                She did not write.

                I wrote pages and pages of useless things, commentary on TV shows we used to watch together, updates on my life, well-wishes and pleas to hear about the goings-on in her own. I did not write that I missed her, or that I still loved her, or that I wanted her back – and I considered myself very accomplished for refraining from these things. At some points the only thing that kept me from breaking down was to imagine her stepping into her adult life, taking charge of herself and beginning to combat her issues. _Be strong, my girl –_ the last thing I ever said to her. I hope she followed my advice.

                I never heard back until one Monday night, as I worked on a group project with my friend. It popped up on my screen, and I held my breath as I read. Elsa never sounded like herself when she wrote; her emails were stilted and lacked all the goofy glory of her in person – her writing style was a little childish and painfully self-conscious. Her letter said only that she would not write to me again because it was too painful for her, and she wanted to look forward rather than back; she wished that I could find someone to rely upon, but she could not be that someone.

                So now I haven’t heard from her in months. For all those eight years of friendship and half a year of incredible romance -  I will never know if and how she gets a better handle on her ice powers, which major she chooses, which books she reads, how Henrik will fare and whether he’ll find a wife his own age. I will never have those treasured experiences with her: we won’t get married, or meet each other’s in-laws, or have sex, or go on an adventure across the world together. I live in one place and she in another; most likely, I will never see her face again or hear her delicate, careful voice pronounce each word in the English language with equally tender care.

From where I stand, she might as well be fictional.

It helps me to think about the passage of time. That six-month period in which Elsa was my girlfriend, in which I loved her and she loved me – it is not erased by the fact that it is over. Though we will not grow old together and love each other forever, our love was real and good and true. And from our time together I learned something – that my time is running out, that our time on Earth is always running out, and the only way to shut out the quiet _tick tock_ of the clock counting the seconds I have left to live is to _do_ something, to go out there and take my life forcibly into my hands and mold it into something I find worthwhile.

No matter how old I grow to be, how many other girlfriends or wives I love, in the story of my life there will always be those golden six months, those sunlit times when I woke up next to a beautiful, magical woman called Elsa, and made her smile.

 

_For M._


End file.
